The Buzz on Beyond

Like Jan said, I too have always found the fun of Educause to be in catching up with old friends and colleagues. And of course this year was no exception on that front. But what made this year’s conference special for me was that I was finally able to start talking with folks about our plans for the first property coming out of the Beyond Initiative. While we were at the show we unveiled our plans for a social bookmarking service, customized for education, and integrated with all of Blackboard Learning System products. It’s an exciting new way for students, faculty, and staff to find educationally valuable resources on the web.

If you’re not so familiar social bookmarking, WIkipedia has a good explanation of it. Of course, if you’re here reading this blog, you’re probably a bit more ahead of the curve on this type of stuff than most. What we’re really spending our time on is how to make it more useful for education, and how to best integrate it with course management systems.

Today we’re having our first meeting with our Product Development Partners for this project. We’ve got 17 clients who will be advising us as we share our product designs with them. We’re heavy into development already!

I’m thinking that there are more folks who would like to see what we presented about the property at Educause, so I’m trying to schedule some additional opportunities for others to get the latest info. Feel free to email us at Beyond@blackboard.com and we’ll make sure to let you know when we might be scheduling webinars etc.